Food webs + Energy transfer

- Some timed it so that their babies can hatch and eat during the time

- Some use it to fatten up to produce young in the next season

How do organisms use the spring bloom in primary production to increase their odds of reproductive success?

Producers

Nourish themselves though photosynthesis or chemosynthesis/Autotrophic

- Eat other organisms

- Herbivores, omnivores, carnivores

- Heterotrophic

What are the characteristics of consumers?

- Break down dead organisms or waste

- Sometimes called detritvores

- Heterotrophic

What are the characteristics of decomposers?

- Ingest sediment or particles within the sediment

- Benthic organisms

- Many worms, crabs, snails, fish, sea cucumbers

What is part of the feeding strategy, deposit feeding?

Changes the sediments of the seafloor

What is deposit feeding?

- Strain suspended food particles from water

- May live on seafloor or in water column

- May bivalves, krill, sponges, baleen whales

What is part of the feeding strategy, filter or suspension feeding?

- Cleans the water columns

- When an organism filters the water to its food

What is suspension/filter feeding?

Trophic level

The transfer of energy to a higher level

eat others

Sometimes, organisms can.... in their own trophic level

grazers

First level (primary consumers) can sometimes be called?

contain

Food webs .... food chains

Food webs

.... branch and have multiple path for singular food items

Food chains

... are unbranched, simple, and have only one organism on each level

10%

.... of energy is always transferred to the next level

shift

Food webs can be very complex because diets often ... as organisms grow

2%

The transfer of energy from the sun to photosynthesising organisms is ... and from there it is 10%

Predators

... are often found in areas with high productivity

- Dissolved organic matter (leaky cells, sloppy eating, viruses-burst cells)

- Microbes utilize

- Protozoans eat microbes

- Zooplankton eat protozoans

- As much as half of all the primary production in the ocean may pass through DOM phase

What are the characteristics of the microbial loop?

- Microbial loop

- Decomposers placement

- Decomposers food webs

- Kelp forest

What else makes food webs complicated?

Coastal ecosystems

.... have loads of detrital (decomposers)

Vascular plants

True .... are found in coastal ecosystems

cycle

Decomposers have their own ...

kelp

... have to go through a detrital phase in order to be more available to the ecosystem